Shooting in Universal City

This lively mystery captures the look and feel, the glamour and practicality, of old Hollywood. The story takes place in Hollywood in 1917, just after America has entered the Great War. Wallace Kerrigan and his brother, movie star J. Warren Kerrigan, must make one more film, a peculiar vampire tale called Three Queens, to fulfill their contract to Universal Pictures. When the ill-tempered impresario backing this movie dies in suspicious circumstances, Wally is charged with investigating his death. His friend and neighbor, L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Oz books, provides wise counsel. A witty starlet, Pearl Seagrove, also comes to his aid, though she inspires feelings that could spell trouble for Wally’s marriage. The investigation leads him on a groundbreaking flight north in a Handley Page bomber, a midnight foray to a deserted beach house with surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku, a tour of the original Krotona Institute for theosophical studies in Hollywood, and finally to the lair of a vicious killer.This is the first in a series of novels chronicling the adventures of Wallace Kerrigan and Pearl Seagrove.